Archive for April, 2015

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19/04/2015

"There Are Still Judges…"

Human Wrongs Watch

By Uri Avnery*

18 April 2015

Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery

THIS WEEK I won a dubious distinction: a groundbreaking Supreme Court judgment has been named after me.

It is an honor I would have gladly dispensed with.

MY NAME appeared at the head of a list of applicants, associations and individuals, which asked the court to cancel a law enacted by the Knesset.

Israel has no written constitution. This unusual situation arose right from the beginning of the state because David Ben-Gurion, a fierce secularist, could not achieve a compromise with the orthodox parties, which insisted that the Torah already is a constitution.

So, instead of a constitution, we have a number of Basic Laws which cover only a part of the ground, and a mass of Supreme Court precedents. This court slowly arrogated to itself the right to abolish Laws enacted by the Knesset which contradict the nonexistent constitution.

STARTING FROM the last Knesset, extreme right-wing Likud Members have been competing with each other in their efforts to castrate the Supreme Court one way or another. Some would stuff the court with right-wing judges, others would radically limit its jurisdiction.

Things came to a head when a group of far-right Likud members launched a veritable avalanche of bills which were clearly unconstitutional. One of them, and the most dangerous one, was a law that forbade people to call for a boycott of the State of Israel and, in a sinister way, added the words “and of territories held by it”.

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19/04/2015

UN Urges States to Act on New Standards to Eliminate Devastating Violence against Children

Human Wrongs Watch

United Nations officials gathered at the UN Crime Congress under way in Doha, Qatar, on 18 April 2015 called on Member States to take action and implement the new international standards on the elimination of violence against children adopted late last year, stressing that such violence continues to have a devastating effect on children, families, and society as a whole.*

Nearly 400,000 children in Gaza are suffering from psychosocial distress as a result of the 50-day armed conflict in 2014. Photo: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi

Nearly 400,000 children in Gaza are suffering from psychosocial distress as a result of the 50-day armed conflict in 2014. Photo: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi

The new set of international standards and norms – entitled the “United Nations Model strategies and practical measures on the elimination of violence against children in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice,” and approved by the UN General Assembly on 18 December 2014 – aim to not only improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in preventing and responding to violence against children but also to protect children against any violence that may result from their contact with that system.

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18/04/2015

Should 'Killer Robots' Be Banned?

Human Wrongs Watch

By Imogen Foulkes*

Geneva, 14 April 2015 (IRIN) – Drones are already doing a lot of killing on behalf of certain governments, but a human being still has to make a conscious decision somewhere and press a button. What if killing machines were programmed to take such decisions all by themselves?

**Photo: Campaign to Stop Killer Robots | The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots has support from a number of British MPs | Source: IRIN

**Photo: Campaign to Stop Killer Robots | The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots has support from a number of British MPs | Source: IRIN

“Killer robots” may sound like fodder for dystopian fiction, but they are exactly what weapons technology experts, human rights groups and United Nations’ member states are meeting in Geneva this week to discuss.

The five-day gathering, taking place within the context of the UN’s Convention on Conventional Weapons, is looking at the legal and moral implications of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, LAWS for short, and assessing how advanced their development already is.

IRIN examines the key issues.

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18/04/2015

Organized Crime in Wildlife, Gold and Timber Worth Over One Billion USD, Further Fuels Conflict in DR Congo

Human Wrongs Watch

‘Experts estimate that 10-30 per cent of this illegal trade (around US$ 72-426 million per annum) goes to transnational organized criminal networks based outside eastern DR Congo.’

Photo by MONUSCO | Source: UNEP

Nairobi, 16 April 2015 — Organized crime and the illegal trade in natural resources continues to increasingly fuel the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners.*

The Government of DRC, supported by the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) – the largest UN peacekeeping mission with 20,000 uniformed personnel – is confronting not only a political insurgency but an increasing number of illegal operations conducted by militarized criminal groups with transnational links involved in large-scale smuggling and laundering of natural resources.

Every year gold, minerals, timber, charcoal and wildlife products such as ivory, valued between US$ 0.7-1.3 billion annually, are exploited and smuggled illegally out of the conflict zone and surrounding areas in eastern DRC.

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18/04/2015

Burns Victims Rush for Treatment in Lampedusa after High Seas Ordeal

Human Wrongs Watch

By Kate Bond*

Lampedusa Island, Italy, 17 April 2015 (UNHCR) – A baby as young as six months, with severe burns across half of her face, was among traumatized survivors of the latest sea rescue off the coast of southern Italy’s Lampedusa Island.

© UNHCR/F. Malavolta | Italian rescue workers rush an injured person, hands swathed in bloodied bandages, off a rescue vessel in Lampedusa.

The infant was one of 70 refugees and migrants on board a half-inflated rubber dinghy that had set sail from Libya and been rescued by the Italian coastguard after two days on the Mediterranean Sea. Many people had been badly burned before even setting foot on the vessel, after a gas canister exploded while they were being held by smugglers on land.

Among the island’s newest arrivals on Thursday [16 April 2015] night were 20 women, 47 men and two children. One 25-year-old woman did not survive the hazardous journey, and lay in a black body bag before being placed in a coffin.

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18/04/2015

$30 Million Badly Needed to Help 18,000 Palestinians Besieged in Yarmouk Camp

Human Wrongs Watch

The United Nations agency tasked with the ensuring the well-being of Palestinian refugees is appealing for $30 million to carry out life-sustaining assistance to 18,000 civilians from besieged Yarmouk refugee camp, including 3,500 children.

UNRWA distributing aid in Yalda, an area adjacent to Yarmouk, Syria, hosting displaced civilians. Photo: UNRWA

UNRWA distributing aid in Yalda, an area adjacent to Yarmouk, Syria, hosting displaced civilians. Photo: UNRWA

Over the past days, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has significantly expanded its response in areas neighbouring Yarmouk, on the southern edge of Damascus, where civilians have sought shelter amid a deteriorating security situation since armed groups began fighting in and around the camp.

“This remains a volatile, rapidly changing environment of armed conflict and we must be prepared to respond to those in need, wherever they are,” on 17 April 2015 said Michael Kingsley-Nyinah, UNRWA Director in Syria, in a statement to the media.

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18/04/2015

Fast Growing Cybercrime, an Established Threat to Security of States and Individuals

Human Wrongs Watch

Efforts to tame the fast-growing cybercrime threat took centre stage at the United Nations Crime Congress under way in Doha, Qatar, as a diverse group of experts in the field urged strong partnerships between the public and private sectors to create a safer digital landscape.

UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz

“Cybercrime has become an established threat to the security of States and individuals alike,” Loide Lungameni, Chief of the Organized Crime and Illicit Trafficking Branch in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), on 17 April 2015 told a high-level event on the topic.*

Continuing, she warned those gathered for the 13th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice that in the near future, due to ever-increasing global connectivity, it will become hard to imagine a form of cybercrime – or perhaps any crime – that does not involve electronic evidence.

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17/04/2015

Prison or Poverty: Impossible Choice for Israel Deportees

Human Wrongs Watch

By Kate Shuttleworth and Samuel Okiror*

JERUSALEM/KAMPALA, 16 April 2015 (IRIN) – For Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers facing deportation from Israel’s Holot detention centre, the future is bleak. Those who have gone before describe a hand-to-mouth existence in Uganda or no freedom of movement in Rwanda.
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**Photo: Kate Shuttleworth/IRIN | A view through the fence of Holot “open” detention centre

“There was no difference with the life in Israel,” Abush Mekonen, one of eight Eritrean asylum-seekers deported to Rwanda in July 2014, told IRIN. Mekonen said they had been promised jobs in Rwanda but instead were confined to a hotel. “We were not allowed to move or go out.”

Israel has been encouraging asylum-seekers to leave the country for the past year by offering them one-off grants of $3,500 and one-way tickets home or to “safe” third countries in Africa.

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17/04/2015

Russia, China, Iran: In Sync

By Pepe Escobar*
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16 April 2015 (RT) – Over past decades, the pre-fabricated myth of an elusive “Iranian bomb” was never the real issue between the US and Iran; the issue was how to subdue – or “isolate” – a powerful, independent nation that refused to toe the exceptionalist line.
S-300 (RIA Novosti / Alexey Danichev)

S-300 (RIA Novosti / Alexey Danichev) | Source: RT

Now that the “rehabilitation” of Iran – at least for some exceptionalists and their minions – may be imminent, pending a nuclear deal to be clinched in June, various Washington factions still can’t get their act together.

The Pentagon has all but admitted the perennial wet dream of neocons and corporate media remains on the table; the military option.

The US Congress will go no holds barred in trying to scotch the deal. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously passed a bill that would give Congress the right to interfere with anything related to the removal of sanctions.

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17/04/2015

Why Should a Prohibition on Financing Be Included in a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty?

Human Wrongs Watch

By Susi Snyder, PAX*

Nuclear weapons are unacceptable weapons. They are designed to be indiscriminate, to cause catastrophic humanitarian harm. They are illegitimate and no one should possess them. In fact, continued possession of weapons designed to cause indiscriminate harm, including the possibility of catastrophic climate change, is something to be ashamed of. When nuclear weapons are outlawed, only outlaws will have nuclear weapons.

Dont-Bank-on-the-Bomb-Cover-Title1

Source: ICAN

Increasing the stigma around nuclear weapons, and demonstrating whole of society opposition to possession of nuclear weapons helps negotiation efforts to make them illegal, which in turn facilitates their elimination.

No weapon has ever been eliminated before it was outlawed.

No weapon is outlawed without first becoming stigmatised.

The stigma is more important than we may think. We know that nuclear weapons are bad, but we must be much louder in defining them as unacceptable, as illegitimate.

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